In brief, this sets out to take Lord Carter's Digital Britain report and turn some of it into law.

Amongst the main measures:

• Action against illegal file-sharing forcing ISPs to take action against infringers. This includes the controversial measure which could see repeat offenders cut off

• Allows the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act to be amended if in future new communications technologies allow content to be copied in new ways

• New duty on Ofcom to encourage investment the spread of next-generation broadband. Part of this involves that £6 telephone tax - but that will be introduced via the pre-Budget report

• Digital "safety measures" to stop firms registering domain names for illicit use

• Age ratings on video games to be made compulsory for all games aimed at players aged 12 and over

Now the most controversial elements are of course those measures against unlawful file-sharers, and the ministers were subjected to a series of questions about the possibility of repeat offenders having their connections suspended.

They were very keen to stress that this was the nuclear option - first of all internet service providers would have to send out letters to those spotted file-sharing on their networks.
The content owners will have to pay a fixed fee, set by Ofcom, to have that letter sent to the ISP's customer.

If that didn't work, then the secretary of state would have to go to Parliament before the ISPs could be forced to press the suspension button - or use other technical measures.

That decision would only be made if the lesser measures failed to cut unlawful file-sharing by at least 70%. But the ministers seemed pretty unclear about the timetable for that 70% reduction - and even less clear about how it would be measured.

While the government says it has the support of the Conservatives for these measures, it has already received some friendly fire from Tom Watson, the former digital minister who is worried about those powers to amend the copyright act, and from the big ISPs, notably TalkTalk.

Stephen Timms, the minister for Digital Britain, insisted that something like 90% of the ISP market supported the policy - his maths seem questionable - and that in any case new business models were making file-sharing less attractive.

On the question of rural broadband - a hot issue I know for some readers of this blog - there was a promise that the £6 landline tax would go a long way to making sure that 90% of the country would get access to fast broadband by 2017.

That new tax, though, will only be implemented if the government manages to get a Finance Bill through before the general election, against fierce opposition.

So two big ideas in this bill - that content owners should be able to pursue file-sharers with severe punishment, and that major public investment should go into next generation broadband. But given the fuzzy timetables and determined opposition, will either of them come to anything?

Update 16:00: In this morning's briefing Stephen Timms suggested that the majority of the internet service providers supported the anti-file-sharing measures - indeed, he claimed that ISPs representing 90% of customers were backing it.

But so far today I've received statements from both ISPA - the internet providers' trade body - and BT, which Mr Timms cited as a supporter, and neither has been exactly enthusiastic.
ISPA secretary general Nicholas Lansman said:

"ISPA is extremely disappointed by aspects of the proposals to address illicit filesharing. This legislation is being fast-tracked by the Government and will do little to address the underlying problem."

Whereas John Petter, managing director of BT Consumer, said this:

"We believe abuse of copyright is wrong. However, we have real concerns about the government's plans and the lack of legal protections for accused individuals. We believe that technical measures are not the way forward and that a system of court fines for repeat infringers is preferable. Such an approach would not only protect innocent people, it could also create a fund that could be used to support the UK's creative industries."

The music and movie industries have welcomed the bill - but it looks as though the government faces quite a battle with the ISPs.

The charge comes from Jim Gamble of the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre, who wants Facebook (and MySpace) to follow the lead of Bebo in including Ceop's "Report button" in its social network.

Mr Gamble says he doesn't understand why Facebook won't take a fairly simple step which would give young users instant access to advice on issues from bullying to viruses and hacking, and would put them in touch with the police if they so wished.

Now, Facebook knew this attack was coming and gave the BBC a fairly comprehensive statement, explaining why the service is not keen on the Ceop button.

It says that it's tried out such systems on a number of occasions, and that they've proved ineffective, actually decreasing the number of abuse reports. It points out that it's an international site and would prefer to have its own global protection system rather than a separate one in each territory. And, in what appears to be a jibe aimed at Bebo, it says:

"We are confident that the Ceop button is an excellent solution for sites that have not invested in as robust a reporting infrastructure as Facebook has in place and one we continue to improve."

The social network - which earlier this month invited the BBC to film the centre in Dublin where it investigates reports of abuse - might appear to have quite a coherent case. But what Facebook has not done at the time of writing is to come on the radio and defend itself against its critics - allowing Jim Gamble to more convincingly argue that a company that won't debate the issue can't have much of a case.

We should also remember that, as various callers to a recent Nicky Campbell phone-in pointed out, there is an age-limit of 13 for Facebook, and there is a duty on parents to monitor the way their children use social networks.

But Facebook appears to have decided that it has nothing to gain by tangling live on air with a respected figure like Jim Gamble.

Facebook is of course a global business, based in California - but it is also now a major British media company, earning plenty of advertising revenue here and having a big effect on millions of lives. With that kind of power, some are asking: does it have a responsibility to answer its critics - especially when it believes that their criticisms are wrong-headed?

These awards, which aim to celebrate British companies at the leading edge of science, technology and innovation, were the brainchild of the science minister Lord Drayson and the entrepreneur and "Dragon's Den" dragon James Caan. The aim does indeed appear to be to scatter the same kind of stardust over Britain's leading innovators that the BAFTAs sprinkle over film and television stars. But, as I'll explain later, there's still a way to go before the iAwards succeed in that aim.

First, I should make it clear that I was one of the panel of judges involved in choosing the winners, although you'll be glad to hear there were also some very distinguished scientists and engineers on the panel. There was a mountain of paperwork and some very impressive entries - although there were also too many companies that struggled to
communicate exactly what was innovative about the products they were submitting for consideration.

But here are just three of the winners:

The iAward of the year and iAward for best technology start-up

Horizon Discovery Ltd, Cambridge: X-MAN Model Cancer Patient

This was one of a number of entries from Britain's biotech industry and by far the most impressive. Horizon has in effect created a cancer patient in a test-tube, which should help to identify personalised cancer treatment, reduce R&D costs, and increase patient survival. "world-class scientists doing first-class work, with excellent prospects for impact on the health sector", was how one judge put it.

The iAward for a consumer product

Unilever R&D, London: Pureit

This category included a couple of other strong entrants - a device which screens nuisance calls and a very smart One Touch jar-opener, aimed at solving a growing problem for an ageing population. But the winner was Pureit, a simple water purification device that could bring clean water to millions around the world. It's a jug which removes parasites, pesticides and bacteria with its innovative Germkill battery, designed to clean as much as 1,500 litres of water before it needs replacing.

The iAward for the next big thing

Diverse-Energy Ltd, West Sussex: PowerCube

This was the category which I was in charge of judging, and it was difficult to work out with products from such a wide range of industries what would really be the next big thing. But the Powercube really stood out - it's a fuel-cell-based power system for mobile phone masts, designed to provide a clean, low-cost and reliable alternative to diesel generators. Anyone who's travelled in developing countries recently will have noticed phone masts springing up everywhere, many of them far from mains power. That means noisy and polluting diesel generators and Powercube aims to replace them with a fuel cell which uses ammonia to produce hydrogen. We saw evidence that this innovation was already being effectively commercialised - and could have applications beyond phone masts in all those places which struggle to get reliable and clean energy.

So some very impressive products, providing an encouraging glimpse of British innovation. But something was missing from these technology BAFTAs - looking at those who climbed the stage to collect their awards, I couldn't spot anyone under 30 and precious few women.

And indeed the judges noticed that while many big established businesses in fields like biotech and energy and construction had submitted entries, there was little or nothing from two of the sectors where Britain does have an edge, namely the video games industry and web development. None of those funky young firms in Shoreditch, Brighton or Dundee appeared to have heard of the iAwards. Perhaps they're too busy just struggling to get off the ground - but let's hope that next year's awards can give a rather more rounded picture of the state of British technology.

The search company has responded to the anger of many in the publishing world by making concessions late last week which mean that most non-American titles will not be included. "Google backtracks on putting world's books online," read one headline today.

But actually it's a lot more complicated than that, as I discovered in the genteel surroundings of the Society of Authors in Kensington this lunchtime.

Representatives of publishers and authors in the US and UK had called a few journalists together to explain some of the details of this extraordinarily complex deal.

After an hour I think I might just about have got to grips with it - but let's boil it down to a few headlines.

• The deal envisages the digitisation of millions of out-of-print works that are in libraries in the United States.

• The number of books involved has now come down by 60%, following the decision to exclude most foreign language books.

• But books by UK, Australian and Canadian authors held in US libraries will be part of the programme, unless the authors or publishers opt out.

• Google users outside the United States will not have access to the service.

What was clear from the meeting was that the bodies representing US and UK authors and publishers are united in the belief that the deal is now satisfactory and should go through.

The Authors' Licensing and Collecting Society, which collects fees for writers, says it has received around 2,000 positive e-mails from its members, with only four or five opposed to the settlement.

But, I asked how could they all be so sanguine about the prospect of giving Google a foothold in online publishing which might eventually make an already powerful company the dominant force in the future of books?

They insisted that a deal involving out-of-print titles, a sector of the market which was by definition unprofitable, would not set a precedent: "Nobody expects the settlement to be the mechanism to make in-print books available to the general public," said Paul Aiken of the US Authors Guild.

He then picked up his copy of Amazon's e-book the Kindle to make the point that monopoly power currently resided elsewhere:

"Amazon has 90% of the e-book market in the United States, and 75% of the online print book market - Google has roughly 0%. Google entering the market for out-of-print books just isn't going to change the equation."

Simon Juden of the UK Publishers said that he and his colleagues across Europe were working on Arrow, an EU-funded system for putting out-of-print books online, which would be "much more platform-neutral".

Why, then, had his organisation backed this system which was so far from being neutral? "We sit where we sit," he replied, "to get where we are we started with a court action in 2005. In the real world, this is just where we are."

And one other thing is very clear - this story will have many more chapters. Even if the current settlement finally gets the approval of the US court, it may not come into force for some years.

"There are implacable opponents with money and they will appeal it," said the man from the US Publishers Association. So, who knows, perhaps a European online book platform could be up and running while Google's version remains trapped inside the American legal system.

But, as we shake our heads and ask ourselves how it came to this, shouldn't we also be asking another question: are adults any better?

You don't have to roam far online to find examples of rudeness, aggression and downright bullying. I had a quick scan of the politics blogs - left and right - this morning and these were just a few of the comments I found:

"He should be hung drawn and quartered, as slowly as is possible to maximise his suffering."

"This EVIL person deserves no pity. He is accomplished in one thing only. Utter Cowardice."

"The rest of Parliament should be shot, not hung."

But it's not just politics that is discussed online with this level of vituperation. Almost any area of life - from religion, to the environment to literature - seems capable of attracting those, who when sat in front of a computer, will tap out messages of hate that they would never be likely to express face-to-face with their opponents.

Even a subject that most might see as fairly innocuous, such as which computer operating system might be the best, can spark furious exchanges amongst people who attack each others' credentials, motives, professionalism - or right to exist.

And what do nearly all of these angry people have in common? They are anonymous, leaving just a nom de guerre scattered across various blogs and message boards. Now, anonymity is a vital protection for those who want to protest against the Iranian authorities or reveal malpractice by their employer - or to talk about their own experiences at the hands of school bullies.

But should we have any respect for anyone who launches wounding attacks without having the courage to reveal their own identity? No - arguably not in the playground, nor on an instant messaging service, or anywhere online.

In Seoul, we found television stations pouring money into special services for mobiles, and Koreans could be seen enjoying a football match or catching up with a soap on their phones.

But so far in the UK - and across Europe, as far as I can see - mobile television is the personal jet-pack of consumer technology: something that looks fun but has stubbornly refused to take off.

There have been numerous experiments, rows over different broadcast standards, and quite a few failed launches - remember that Virgin Mobile TV service, promoted by Pamela Anderson, which closed after attracting fewer than 10,000 subscribers?

It seems that a combination of technological problems and consumer indifference has made both operators and broadcasters pause for thought. The trouble is that the various broadcast systems that have been tried out have so far looked too expensive, while television over the 3g network has proved just a bit flaky.

Now, though, there's a new wave of interest, sparked by the proliferation of smartphones with bigger screens, notably the iPhone.

While few people are watching live television, more and more seem to be putting programmes on their phones to watch on the move, and it seems the BBC's iPlayer service for mobiles has also proved quite popular.

Some dedicated gadget fans are also using Slingbox's technology to deliver their home television service to their mobile phones. But this week, Sky launched a mobile TV service aimed specifically at iPhone users, and it set me wondering whether at last someone was going to crack the live TV conundrum.

Sky says it already has around 250,000 subscribers to two mobile sports TV services on a number of handsets - but it has big hopes for the iPhone and its early-adopter user base (due in part to the apps potential and, again, that bigger screen). Around two million people have downloaded a series of free Sky applications, but now the big test will be how many will sign up for the £6-per-month service giving access to all of Sky's live sports output.

But here's the catch - it's only available on wi-fi, so while it may be handy as a cheaper substitute at home for those unwilling to pay full whack for Sky Sports, it's unlikely to allow many people to catch Premiership action on the move.

It's apparently O2 which has decreed that this - like other TV streaming services - cannot be accessed on its 3g network. The operator says that if some people are watching television on their mobiles, others could see their service impaired. And this brings us back to the real problem: an industry struggling to deliver a compelling experience to mobile consumers with technology which isn't yet up to the job.

One live service delivered over 3g is, however, causing a lot of excitement. It's called TVCatchup, and it offers the main channels live to a computer or an iPhone.

I've tried it out over the last few days: catching up with a bit of Strictly Come Dancing as we walked to a firework display; watching the Six O'Clock News on the train home. It's amazing when it works, though prone to freezing when network coverage dips.

There is of course one catch to TVCatchup. The broadcasters appear dubious about its legal status, though I'm not entirely sure what the difference is between a phone streaming a live feed of BBC1 and one of those tiny portable televisions picking up the broadcast signal. In both cases, though, you do need a television licence to watch live TV (see this post at the BBC Internet Blog). (Note to TV Licensing: how about a licence app for phones? Free to those who've already got a licence?)

The appetite for live television on the move can only grow. The question now is who will be able to come up with something that delivers on three fronts - the right technology, a price consumers will pay, and a business model that will survive for more than a few months.

Whether or not Simplicity Computing succeeds will be a big test of two things - the appetite of older people to get online and the attractiveness of open source software as a means of dealing with digital exclusion.

Yesterday we took 80-year-old Betty Parsons for her first encounter with a computer. She climbed the stairs at the home of Nigel Houghton, who's masterminding the Simplicity venture, and sat herself down in front of the machine. When it's switched on for the first time, up pops Valerie Singleton - co-founder of the business launching Simplicity - and starts explaining what to do next, much like Microsoft's talking paperclip.

It's very basic - how to use a mouse, how to navigate your way around the simple front page and so on - but it needs to be. It's instructive watching someone using a mouse for the first time. Betty found it a real struggle - and that must be a big hurdle which some people will not clear.

Simplicity runs on the Linux Mint free operating system, and Liam Proven, who's designed the whole set-up, tracked down a company called Vegan Solutions - yes those Italian vegans - which had already produced a software package aimed at older users. He's worked with the Italians to adapt their Eldy software for British use.

So the home page is deliberately stripped down to essentials: six buttons leading to e-mail, web browsing, chat, documents, your personal profile - and more video tutorials by Val Singleton. There are no long menus with bewildering choices and wherever you are in the system, there's another button marked Square One, which takes you back to... well, you can guess.

Liam Proven told me that he was "platform-agnostic" but had chosen a Linux operating system for three reasons:

"Firstly, it means a fairly big price saving because Linux is free, so £70 to £80 is saved on what is meant to be a low-priced computer. Secondly, it's extremely secure so there's no need for anti-virus, and thirdly it runs very much better and faster than Windows on a more limited machine."

But there's a couple of questions to be asked about Simplicity. It's not all that cheap - systems range from £299 without screen or keyboard to £525 for a complete system. Then there are some people who will undoubtedly feel patronised by the very idea of a computer for older users - one woman got in touch with me this morning to express her annoyance - and others will ask why they shouldn't be taught to use Windows like just about everybody else.

When I visited a UK Online centre the other day, a group of older users of varying degrees of computing skill were using the desktops to surf the web and send e-mails, occasionally asking for help from a volunteer. The computers were all running Windows XP and it set me wondering whether this is still the first operating system most novices see when they come to one of these places.

UK Online pointed out that every centre operates independently, obtaining its funding from various sources and choosing what hardware and software to buy. But yes, it appears they almost exclusively use Windows - and mostly XP. A spokesman said: "Many choose Microsoft as it is the leading system used in the workplace or on PCs bought in retail stores and therefore the one customers often wish to learn."

They are also almost all using Internet Explorer to browse the internet - 86% of the computers are on various versions of IE, with just 10% on Firefox - so if you're learning about computers in a UK Online centre, you'll almost certainly be plunged into a Windows world.

So Simplicity is swimming against the tide, and may find some resistance, not from older customers, but from sons and daughters who'd rather see their parents learn the same system as themselves. But Betty Parsons certainly liked the look of it - though getting to grips with that mouse will still be a challenge - and the company says its stand was besieged by eager customers when it showed off a pilot system at an exhibition recently.

There's no reason - except for inertia - why we should all have to start our computing journey using the same system. Indeed, if Simplicity proves a hit, it may encourage others to look at their software and ask why it is so difficult for a first-time user to grasp. Oh, and one more thing - Val Singleton or a talking paperclip? No contest.

It started this morning with a story in the Daily Mail about the violence in the 18-rated game. The Mail said critics had accused the creators Activision of being irresponsible - but the only critic named was Keith Vaz, the Labour MP for Leicester East, who said this: "I am absolutely shocked by the level of violence in this game and am particularly concerned about how realistic the game itself looks."

Mr Vaz has been a long-term critic of the games industry, and plans to raise his concerns over Call of Duty in the Commons this afternoon in questions to the culture secretary and his team.

But within hours another Labour MP Tom Watson had hit back. Mr Watson is the former minister for digital engagement, and a prolific blogger and social networker who has shown a willingness to go on the attack over issues like cutting off illegal filesharers since he left the government in April.

He had already shown his impatience with critics of video games and this morning started a Facebook group, Gamers' Voice. The mission statement on the group's page says: "Are you sick of UK newspapers and (my fellow) politicians beating up on gaming? So am I. The truth is, UK gamers need their own pressure group. I want to help you start one up."

I got hold of Tom Watson and he told me that this morning's article had "pushed me over the edge". He said that the voice of ordinary games wasn't being heard:

"Everything that comes out of Parliament in relation to video games is relentlessly negative. There are thousands of people employed in this industry, there are 26 million people playing games. We should have a much more balanced view of the industry, indeed we should be supporting them through difficult times."

Keith Vaz's concern is about one particular level of the game, which involves the gamer deciding whether to kill unarmed civilians. I contacted Activision, and a spokesman pointed out that players encounter a mandatory "checkpoint" before this segment of the game, warning that it contains disturbing elements.

Tom Watson says the content in question is "deeply repulsive" and he would not want to play it himself - but he points out that similar material is in both books and films, and he believes that as long as there is a classification system which is well policed, there is not really an issue here.

Keith Vaz told me he was concerned by the way the manufacturers of the game were glorifying violence.

"Nobody is trying to stop anyone over the age of 18 purchasing this game," he said. But he said government, manufacturers, retailers and parents all had a responsibility to work together to protect children.

He already has a question listed for this afternoon about the steps taken by the government to implement the recommendations of the Byron Report on the classification of video games, and he will follow up with a supplementary about Call of Duty.

But Tom Watson is planning to hit back with his own views on the gaming industry. That's DCMS at 1430, and you can follow this bout of modern warfare on the BBC Democracy Live website - and maybe report back here on your verdict.

Huddle

Huddle is a company based in south London providing office space to users all around the world. No, not a property company, because the offices used by Huddle's customers are in a web browser. The aim is to allow organisations large and small to have an online space, where staff and clients can share documents, calendars, even a virtual whiteboard. You sign up and are then presented with your first "workspace", described in the blurb as " a secure space that you can share with others and use to manage a project, team or client relationship." So then you can invite colleagues to join you in your online office, editing documents, scheduling meetings, and doing all those other tiresome but important tasks of the average office worker.

There is a free ad-supported service, but Huddle is really aiming at businesses which will pay between £10 and £125 a month for large amounts of online storage. Hold on a minute, though, isn't this tiny start-up lying in the middle of the road waiting to be crushed by the biggest name on the web? After all Google's suite of online applications - documents, spreadsheets and presentations - already fulfils a similar purpose, and Google Wave, if it is ever transformed into something vaguely usable, will take the online collaboration business to a whole new level. And they are both free.

Nevertheless, Huddle has managed to grow rapidly. Its commercial director Charlie Blake Thomas told me that its user base was doubling every four months, and the firm was expecting to be "extremely close" to breaking even in the first quarter of next year - though I think we've all learned to take such forecasts with a pinch of salt. Its customers range from the energy firm Centrica to local councils and government departments, so why are they opting to "huddle" when they could share Google docs for nothing? Mr Blake Thomas said his firm offered a more professional and stable service, citing as an example one local council:"They started by using Google Docs but once they'd got 70 or 80 people onboard it just didn't work for them, and they upgraded to Huddle." He also claimed that, unlike a number of Google services, Huddle was not subject to outages.

There's talk of a ground-breaking deal in the offing which will see a company which still has just 35 employees getting the chance to offer its products to thousands of potential customers. Working together in the cloud is a fashionable new trend with plenty of established American giants sniffing a new way to extract cash from customers - but there is just a possibility that a British minnow could steal the business from under their noses.

Soundcloud

By contrast, sharing music online is now a pretty mature business - or is it? I discovered Soundcloud a while back when I was trying to find somewhere that would host audio files in the same way that YouTube hosts your video. Nobody else was really making it easy to upload music or other forms of audio and then share it in a simple way which anyone could access.

The likes of MySpace are useful for new bands attempting to promote themselves, Spotify and Napster offer online access to music for fans, but Soundcloud aims to be a simple utility for the music industry, allowing artists, labels, A&R executives to store tracks online which they and their fans can access anywhere.

"It's Flickr for audio" is how the co-founder Alex Ljung described it when I caught up with him last week, making the point that, like the photo-sharing service, it's aimed mainly at creators rather than consumers. So here are a couple of examples. This is a track by the band Them Crooked Vultures, which uses Soundcloud to distribute its music. The band also used MySpace to offer fans a preview of its new album, but Alex Ljung claims 20,000 fans listened on Soundcloud, compared to just 12,000 on MySpace.

And here is the interview I conducted with Alex, recorded on my phone and then uploaded to Soundcloud. Afterwards he explained that he'd been a sound designer in Stockholm when he and a friend Erik Whalforss came up with the idea for Soundcloud - and moved to Germany to make it happen. Now a team of 10 is running a business with over 350,000 customers, with offices in London as well as Berlin.

It is following the same "freemium" route as Huddle, with a limited free service, and then pro accounts at prices of as much as £45 a month allowing a record label to store unlimited amounts of music online. In the next week or so it will be releasing an iPhone app, allowing these pro customers - probably music label executives - to demo their tracks on the move, rather than handing out CDs as they do now.

So two smart web start-ups, both managing to survive and grow through the toughest recession in living memory. They've each received £2-3 million in venture capital funding, and have shown that you can do quite a lot these days with a clever idea and limited amounts of cash. Now comes the tough part - proving they can be profitable. Or, perhaps more realistically, finding a bigger firm to buy them and take them to the next level.

The search company has today launched its Dashboard, which it says will allow users to view and control all the data associated with any of the Google products they may use - from Gmail, to web history, to documents and so on. Why should you want to do that? Well it may give you a bit of a wake-up call about just how much information you are leaving stored on servers in California or elsewhere.

It prompted me to do a quick audit of my online data, and work out what control I had over it. There turned out to be a startling quantity of my stuff out there on the web. Amongst the Google products, I use are Gmail, Google Documents, YouTube and Web History. So I have nearly 22,000 e-mails stored, 589 documents, and 63 videos. My search history dates back to December 2006 - I presume that's when I opted into the service - and includes around 8,500 search terms. I'm reasonably satisfied that I have control over that data - after all I can simply delete all that material and opt out of search history if I so wish.

Then there are other photo and video sharing services like Flickr, and Apple's mobileme where I also have hundreds of pictures and videos for anyone to see if they so wish, plus thousands of contacts and calendar appointments which are only available to me. Again I feel pretty confident that I can wipe all of that if I decide that's best.

So what about all the traces I've left on various social networking sites? On Facebook's servers I have a large amount of material, including hundreds of photos posted by me, and quite a few of me posted by others. I can delete my own photos - but not those posted by others of me. And if I really get sick of Facebook I can simply delete my entire profile - and presumably all traces of my networking life there will disappear.

Now let's turn to Twitter. To my slight embarrassment I see that I've contributed over 7,000 tweets since I joined the micro-blogging service in 2007. All of those messages are now searchable by anyone. For the first time, I had a quick glance at Twitter's terms and conditions - and noticed this explanatory note:

"This license is you authorizing us to make your Tweets available to the rest of the world and to let others do the same. But what's yours is yours - you own your content."

Now I've always regarded Twitter as a public place, so it doesn't really worry me that anyone can see what I've tweeted now and in the past. But in what sense do I "own" my content? If I delete my account, my thousands of tweets will still be online for anyone to read.

But there's one aspect of my online life where I'm even less clear about my control over my own data. For a couple of years I've used the Spinvox voice-to-text service - and you may remember that back in the summer I wrote several articles about that company, which included aspects of its data protection policies. I wrote to Spinvox this week with three questions. I wanted to know how long they kept my voice messages and the text transcribed from them, where that data was stored and what would happen to it if the business was sold to another company.

The answers I received were incomplete and slightly worrying. "Messages are stored in accordance with local data protection legislation", was about the sum of the answer to my first question, though I'm still pressing for details of what that means for my personal messages. Spinvox said all the data was held in its secure UK data centres, and if the company were to be sold, the new owner would acquire all of it. What I now need to find out is just how easy it is for me to wipe all of my embarrassing and confidential voice messages from the Spinvox servers if they are sold on.

Earlier this week on Radio 4's Start The Week , Viktor Mayer-Schönberger, who has written a book called Delete:The Virtue of Forgetting in a Digital Age, argued that the internet's infinite capacity to remember can be a real threat to our future reputations. He said that it was so much cheaper and easier now to store data on the internet than to delete it. I thought at the time he was overstating the problem - but looking at my vast collection of online documents, photos and other detritus, I begin to worry that he may be right.

Well, the price plans that Orange has published for the phone show little sign of an eagerness for hand-to-hand combat.

Apart from an entry-level £30 tariff which promises twice as many minutes as O2's deal, the two firms' offers look virtually identical.

Look at what's likely to be among the most popular tariffs, a 24-month contract for a 16GB iPhone 3GS at £34.26 a month, where you pay £87 for the device.

That's identical in every respect to the O2 deal, except for the cost of the device - which is £87.11.

As we suspected, the high price that Apple extracts from operators leaves them little margin to undercut their rivals - about 11p in fact.

But what does stand out when you examine Orange's price card more closely is what it says about the unlimited data that has been an essential part of the iPhone's appeal.

An asterisk next to the "unlimited" leads to a note saying "Fair Usage policy of 750MB/ month applies." Cue plenty of grumbling from potential customers, particularly on Twitter.

The cap appeared to apply to data downloaded via wi-fi as well as via the 3g network, so some concluded that Orange was planning to curb their customers' use of their own home networks.

I called Orange to check this out - and found the company slightly confused about its own fair usage policy. More than four hours later, the press office finally returned with chapter and verse.

There was a 750MB cap for 3g mobile data, and a separate 750MB for data downloaded with their wi-fi partner BT Openzone - you are free to do what you want on your own network.

So how does this compare with O2? That company came back with its own statement, confirming that its "unlimited" data policy did in fact have its limits.

"We reserve the right... to contact customers about their usage if we believe it adversely affects the service of our other customers, eg if a customer uses their SIM in another device for which it is not intended."

So O2 looks to be a little less restrictive than Orange.

But will many really run up against Orange's limit? At first 750MB may seem an awful lot of data to use on a phone - I reckon I get through about 200MB in a heavy month.

But what we've seen so far is that once you offer people "unlimited" data, they rush to use it, and software developers provide them with new data-rich applications.

Streaming audio and video are increasingly popular on the iPhone, and they can chew up your data allowance at an alarming rate.

Last night someone pointed me towards this clause in Orange's Terms and Conditions:

"Not to be used for other activities (eg using your handset as a modem, non-Orange internet based streaming services, voice or video over the internet, instant messaging, peer to peer file sharing, non-Orange internet based video). Should such use be detected notice may be given and Network protection controls applied to all services which Orange does not believe constitutes mobile browsing."

It sounds as though services like Spotify, AudioBoo, Ustream and even Facebook messaging - increasingly popular with O2 iPhone customers - will be out of bounds for Orange users.

The operator is caught between a rock and a hard place. With little room for manoeuvre on prices, it will be hoping that better network coverage will be one factor winning over iPhone customers from O2.

But if too many power users start streaming TV and playing online games on their phones, the Orange network may buckle under the strain - hence the need for a fair usage limit.

Just hours after publishing its price list, Orange appeared to be having second thoughts about that 750MB cap, admitting that plenty of e-mails had been coming in and that it had noticed the rising tide of Twitter comments.

A spokesman told me the cap would be "reviewed" to make sure that it was at the right level.

The problem for the operators is that users no longer see the iPhone and similar devices as phones but as small computers. And who wants to be told 25 days into each month that they must now stop playing around with their computer and just use it to make calls?

Update, 17:20: Orange has been in touch to clarify their iPhone terms and conditions. Here's the company's statement:

"We do recognise that iPhone customers will use popular streaming services such as YouTube, Spotify etc. As a result we do not intend to apply network protection controls to anyone, as long as they are within their usage allowance. The T&Cs are in place to reserve the right to restrict access should they continue to exceed our Fair Usage policy, and our other Mobile data users suffer a reduced data experience as a result."

What really caught my eye was the continuing forward march of Google. In just one week, the search giant appears to have struck fear into three industries - music, mobile phone makers and the sat-nav merchants - by offering consumers something new, often for nothing. Its OneBox music search service, which has seen it team up with MySpace's iLike, is being billed as a way of drawing consumers away from torrent sites to places where they can choose to pay for tracks. But it will also be seen as a threat to the fragile business models of companies like Spotify.

Google's Android mobile operating system, which had something of a slow start, is now appearing on a plethora of new smartphones, with Motorola's Droid the one currently attracting the most hype - and the inevitable "iPhone killer" tag. Apple can probably be relaxed about any single phone, but how long before there are more people using Android than Mac OS on a mobile?

And one of the services Google will now be pushing on phones like the Droid is free turn-by-turn navigation, which makes sat-nav devices - or the TomTom app on the iPhone - suddenly look very expensive. Investors certainly thought the threat was real - shares in both TomTom and Garmin lurched downhill when the news broke.

There is a danger for Google in this continuing land-grab. Commentators are already drawing parallells between the search firm now and Microsoft in 1995 - and asking when the competition authorities in Washington and Brussels are going to try to cut the company down to size.

That may be a little premature. Apart from in search-based advertising, Google does not have a dominant position in any of the markets it has entered, and plenty of its new ventures (I still don't really get Google Wave) have yet to make the impact that their enthusiastic creators have promised . What's more, there needs to be a plaintiff accusing the firm of anti-competitive behaviour with some pretty convincing evidence before the regulators can start flexing their muscles.

But, as we've seen with the furore over Google Books, there are plenty of people out there who don't swallow the idea that this is a company on a purely philanthropic mission to organise the world's information. And, if they start making enough noise, Google might need to ring up Microsoft and ask for the numbers of some smart competition lawyers.

So were its devoted fans pleased?

Quite the opposite, because in my second broadcast I committed an unpardonable sin.

In a rather clumsily phrased sentence - my only excuse is that it came in the middle of a rather stressful live technology demo - I suggested that Ubuntu was a minority sport only for dedicated enthusiasts.

Afterwards, one blogger transcribed my conversation with Bill Turnbull and Sian Williams:

RCJ: "There's something called 'Ubuntu' which is launched next week. It's a whole sort of little community of enthusiasts building operating systems for absolutely nothing and trying to persuade us that we don't need to be in with the big boys but actually most computer users frankly they don't want to bother with that sort of stuff they want something that's there..."
 
BT: "...that everyone else uses.."
 
RCJ: "Yes"

Now I do know - as plenty of angry messages pointed out - that Ubuntu has been around for a long time and what launches next week is an update. But I should have also made it clear that Linux is not an amateur cottage industry, but a pretty substantial affair supporting a lot of firms that market the systems and teach customers to install and use them.

So when I was contacted by one such company, Canonical, I was glad to take up their offer to try out Ubuntu. They sent over a Dell Inspiron Mini, loaded with "Karmic Koala", as Ubuntu 9.10 is nicknamed.

Now we are going to have a fuller exploration of the system on this site next week, but in the 24 hours I've had the Dell, I've gathered some early impressions.

The first is that it starts up pretty rapidly - I timed it at 40 seconds compared with the 55 seconds the top of the range Sony Vaio X takes to boot Windows 7 - and that the desktop has a pleasingly simple look to it, especially once you've replaced the offensively brown background with something more attractive.

The left hand side of the screen has a strip fulfilling the same purpose as the taskbar in Windows or the dock in Mac OS X, with quick access to key applications. You are provided with a range of open source software, from Firefox to Open Office, and can go online to the Ubuntu Software Centre to seek out other applications.

Getting connected to my home network proved reasonably simple - though I struggled to see other machines and devices on my network.

I installed a few applications - including Skype, and a social networking application called Gwibber.

But when I tried to install a free open-source audio editing program, Audacity, it appeared more complex to get hold of an Ubuntu version than the one I've used on a Mac.

I also gave up on attempting to use the music streaming service Spotify, after a warning that, as there was no Linux version, I would first need to get hold of something called Wine which allows you to run Windows apps. Too much bother...

Navigating around an unfamiliar system was fine once I'd worked out that the Ubuntu logo in the top left hand corner of the screen took me home, and for all my simple computing needs - from word processing to e-mail to web browsing - I found Ubuntu pretty satisfactory.

But, even after some help from a Canonical advisor who came and installed a few add-ons such as Flash, I struggled to work out how I would organise photos, music and video with this system.

So would I actively seek to install Ubuntu or any other Linux variant on a machine I already owned?

To be frank, no, because it would not make my computing life any simpler and more pleasurable than it is now.

But getting a small cheap netbook would be another matter entirely, and the big hope for the Linux community is that more companies will follow Dell's lead in selling computers with Ubuntu pre-installed.

Mind you, some netbook manufacturers who've already found a degree of resistance to Linux netbooks have reverted to XP and are now more likely to look at Windows 7 than anything else.

Faced with such consumer inertia it's hard to see Linux making much progress in boosting its miniscule market share. But remember, the future of computing is mobile - and in that new market for operating systems everything is still to play for.

Risking another pasting from its supporters, I'll predict that Ubuntu will remain a very niche product - but it's Google's Android which could bring open-source to the mass consumer market.

I borrowed a small, very expensive Sony Vaio X running Windows 7 - the lightest laptop I've ever used - and tried to do as much of my work as possible using the unfamiliar operating system. I didn't carry out the kind of tests you might find in a grown-up review but then most of us don't do that - we just try to get on with new software and only really notice it when it goes wrong.

If you're used to one operating system, trying another is like moving into a strange house - it may all look very nice, but it's a pain trying to find out how to turn up the central heating or where the glasses are stored. But Windows 7 did at least boot up reasonably fast - Microsoft says it's reduced the "footprint" of the system by 50%, and that's made it more efficient.

The first thing I want to do when I switch on is connect to the internet. I'm used to searching out a wireless signal at the top of a Mac screen but I found, without too much trouble, a similar connection area to the right of the Windows taskbar and was quickly online.

The Start button in the bottom left-hand corner still provides the route to the applications, though the taskbar has become a little like Apple's dock, so you can simply drag frequently-used applications onto it.

I set about opening a browser, e-mail and word processing applications, and tried to work out where I would keep my photos and music. That process somehow feels more integrated on a Mac because of the iLife suite that comes with it. But having dragged a few tracks and pictures off my home network into the Vaio, it was reasonably easy to start playing.

But what's really different about using this operating system? The two things that stood out for me were the ability to hover over open items in the taskbar and see what was happening at a glance - and a function which allows you to snap two open windows alongside each other so that you can compare or maybe transfer information between them.

But here's a funny thing. By the end of the week, I looked at what I was doing on the tiny screen - and found that just about everything involved software not made by Microsoft. So I'd installed the Firefox browser in preference to Internet Explorer, and started writing documents using Google Docs rather than Microsoft Word, and checking my e-mail via Gmail. As for music, I'd installed iTunes, and to feed my social networking needs, I placed Tweetdeck on the taskbar.

I had ended up furnishing my new Windows 7 home with some familiar items from elsewhere - so perhaps the operating system matters less than it once did.

Of course, what is really important to Microsoft is not winning over the minority who use Mac OS X or Linux variants, but reconnecting with the many previously loyal customers who were deeply unimpressed by Vista.

This week at the National Museum of Computing at Bletchley Park, I met Tony Sale, who has spent 15 years working to rebuild Colossus, the world's first programmable computer used to crack German codes in World War II. At home, Tony has used every version of Windows since 3.1*, but he's stopped at XP. What was wrong with Vista?

"It tried to tell me how to organise my files all the time, I didn't like that." By contrast, Tony says he finds XP very stable and very usable - and he's going to have to be sure that Windows 7 does a similar, or better, job before upgrading.

Computing has come a long way since Colossus, but Microsoft's customers will be asking the same question about its new operating system as the code-breakers did about their new-fangled toy. Does it do the same job better and faster than what we use now?

* As some commenters have pointed out, what Tony Sale must have started with was Windows 3.1, not 3.2 as I had previously written.

Actually, hold on a minute, let's all calm down. After trying out a Kindle over the weekend I'm not convinced it's quite the threat or the salvation which many across the printed media fear or hope it might be.

What does immediately impress is the simplicity and stylishness of the device. Plug it in, charge it, download your first book and you're away. Then subscribe to a digital edition of a newspaper and it is wired to you in the morning, via the Kindle's "whispernet" 3g connection. Just as the iPod was not the first MP3 player, the Kindle is by no means the first digital reader. I've also had a quick play with the Sony Reader, which in its Touch edition is also quite an impressive device.

But the Kindle's integration with the Amazon store is what gives it the edge, while setting off alarm bells in the publishing world. Amazon must be looking at the Apple example, with iPod users herded efficiently to the iTunes store, and hoping that its own integrated system will make it as powerful in digital text as the computer company is in digital music. Which is why the analogue text industries are in a frenzy of fear and anticipation.

Before using the Kindle, I had imagined that it was the newspaper subscriptions rather than the books which would prove the more attractive. But the opposite turned out to be true. There seems to be a pretty good range of e-books in Amazon's store, with a few big hits very competitively priced, and others rather expensive for a 'virtual' product. I bought one of the hits, the Booker prizewinner Wolf Hall, for $8.84. I should explain that Amazon is still running the whole Kindle operation through its US site, which means you pay in dollars - so the Hilary Mantel book cost me about £5.40.

When I started reading, it felt pretty close to the paper experience. There's no glare on the Kindle's screen, so you get simple black text on a cream background, with just enough added bells and whistles. You can make digital notes, search the text, and, if you fall asleep with the book on your face as is my wont, it will remember which page you were on when you turn it on again.

Having also splashed out £14 on the hardback version, I was surprised to find the Kindle Wolf Hall an easier read - although that may be largely due to the fact that the device weighs a mere 400g,and lugging the 1kg book around is a far more back-breaking business. What you don't get is the swappability of a printed book - I'm hardly going to lend the Kindle to a friend so they can read Wolf Hall - nor, as my wife pointed out, do you get your room furnished with attractive book spines.

Then I turned to the digital newspapers. The Kindle Store offers 51 titles from around the world, including four UK papers - The Times, the Daily Mail, the Independent and the Daily Telegraph. They each cost $22.99 per month - about £14. I signed up for trial 14-day subscriptions to the Times and the Telegraph. And was immediately disappointed. You head to the Kindle's home page, click on your chosen newspaper and are presented with a wall of text which is the front page lead story. Struggling to work out what I wanted to read, I found a sections list - Sport, Business, International - but this very dull shop window had no clue as to the precise nature of the goodies within. It all made the idea of reading the paper on the Kindle a very un-enticing prospect.

Suddenly I realised why a book worked on the Kindle but a paper did not. For me, reading a book is an analogue experience - I start at page one and continue until I've finished. A newspaper, on the other hand, is more random, more interactive. I scan the sections and leap from one article to another, much as I do on the web. That's what is already available to me - for free - on newspaper websites, so why would I pay for a less satisfactory digital newspaper? Newspapers have woken up rather late to the fact that they've been giving away content online which could be monetised through e-readers.

There are other reasons why the Kindle may not be quite the game-changer some are claiming. Is a device costing upwards of £200 really going to persuade many people to abandon paper for a screen - especially when you can get a netbook these days for around the same price?

And there will be questions about Amazon's walled garden, which allows some other e-books to be read on the Kindle but doesn't allow titles from its online store to be read on other devices. Other contenders - perhaps including an Apple tablet - may learn some lessons from Amazon and take digital reading to the next level.

The Kindle looks to me like an attractive but expensive niche product, giving a few techie bibliophiles the chance to take more books on holiday without incurring excess baggage charges. But will it force thousands of bookshops to close and transform the economics of struggling newspapers? Don't bet on it.